Who do you think does most of the work in LLVM for example?
It is full of PhD paper contributions.
For example, research students doing internships at Embecosm (https://embecosm.com), as many others, plenty of material from LLVM Developers Meeting sessions.
I guess this is due to the tag line of the company. I am not familiar with the compiler/LLVM space so unsure how the different branches (compiler maintenance and AI tool infrastructure for example) are covered by the PHD internships, etc.
It also wasn't the point. There was a number of completely unnecessary annoyances.
Academics writing compilers actually seemed like a good idea to people back then. Still makes me smile thinking of it sometimes.